I Am
by RAW-SYNTH3TICA
Summary: SLASH M17 - BruceWayne/Bane & ? ?/Bane - A (Nearly, almost, completely Non-Canon) retelling of Bane's earlier history, from when he is born to the uncertain aftermath of Gotham, to the uncertain future of his fate. WIP *Bane's POV*


M17 - SLASH - ALL IS FICTIONAL & NOT MINE. The Dark Knight Rises (Slight AU),  
Pairing: Bane/? (very subtle & eventual Bruce Wayne + Bane)

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I Am  
(Bane's POV)

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I never tire, and yet I am, reawakening new and old pains where I thought Ra's al Ghul eradicated them at their root, nipped my pain in the bud. It is still there where I last remembered it being, waiting for the slightest mistakes, smiling at my attempts at forgetting, laughing at the confusion of my own grief. My true name had been long rubbed out from my memory amongst the sensation of being innocent, but I cling to the one the inmate gave me as I never tried to correct his pronunciation, he called me a word meaning pain, destruction, poison, his rare usage of this makeshift name eclipses that given by my own parents.

Back to the task at hand, the airplane engine rumbles beneath our feet, shaking us unbothered in the air. Bruce lays immersed and seeping through his pores with the same anesthetic gas I come to call curative, his body locked away in a pressurized chamber devoid of his suit, with only the mercy of liquid sleep aids running a steady dose into his bloodstream. It is a long way to the Pit after all.

He is not unlike me, his constant bodily cravings for danger, mine for the cleansing, the balancing of my soul, an inner fight which only my adoptive daughter knows of. One of us, Bruce and I, weighed down by the blood soaking my hands, both that is mine and also that of which is not, my need for the antidote. Talia made sure to firmly include a tiny detail on my behalf when negotiating with John Daggett: to make a Safer analgesic, a one of a kind aerosol drug which then can be connected to my mask. He made the drug, only to have me assume later how rich men with the exception of Bruce Wayne never seem to disappoint.

Another pain clenches me. My supposedly 'poisonous' love for my surrogate daughter Talia al Ghul. I cannot comfort nor hold her as I once had before the plague took me, the biological disease still running through my veins. Pain so excruciating can only be deemed god-given to having had suffered it so debilitating. He chose not to understand my loyalty to his daughter, and I regret every day for not having stood to lead the League of Shadows in her stead once being asked to lead. All too readily accepting his offer was my downfall, I assumed how he wanted a kind of 'brutal mercy' which was fair and yet not at all self-explanatory of crimes to his standards. He trained us mercilessly, but pushed my little Talia further than I while I stood to witness, but not without being restrained and punished first for objecting to his ruthless methods.

"Bane," one of the few who follow me so closely says, they would rather not nudge me or so much as attempt to touch me lest I break their arm, it happened once while I dreamt of my mentor, "We've landed."

"Quicker than I expected," I answer as their ears strain to hear my words beyond the static wheeze emitting from my mask, they can all see the change in air about me, I stand, leaving my sense of calm behind as I allow the memories of prison-life permeate me, soak me through and through, striking a well-known, and well-hidden fear in the cores' of my men, "Get the Batman on his feet."

"He can't stand," another man says, I stride over to the open chamber at the back of the plane and lift an arm halfway, Bruce gasps pitifully and snivels in pain as I give his limb to another capable man standing at my side.

"Drag him," I command, instantly the man tries alone to lift the husked vigilante out of his plastic coffin, I take a GPS out handily from one of my packs and a hood, I quickly check the coordinates and find that we are exactly where my memory took us, I put the piece back and instruct, "Come now, we've a longer way to go."

The familiarity of sand parting for my step and a layer of stone stopping my boot whilst I move is familiar to me, as if at one time my mind constructed such comprehensive hallucination only to have actually treaded through a reality, I was here so many years ago, still the very sensation and recollection is with me. The heat even fears to touch me, it instead torments the small army banded at my heel, my steps visibly dwarfing theirs, I wrap the hood over myself before the wind picks up and sand pelts the leather cowl instead. A sea of dried earth parts before us, my legs backtracking a trail not unlike those taken in a nightmare, eerily and familiarly, the sun never moves in the bare sepia cosmos, we trudge through a seemingly lifeless parchment of a waterless golden sea, searching for a place I once called home.

The hired guns not once complained, they don't care to know me too intimately enough that I Might not bury them to bake in the sand, or whatever fitting delusions they feed themselves in my absence, in my rare presence. The fact that all but a trusty five are not new to the revolution is a comforting thought, the five: two each at my side and one behind me, are a fraction of the remainder of Ra's al Ghul's original students, the rest are borrowed from Arkham and Gotham death row. The surplus of the League of Shadows are stationed throughout Gotham, some in Wayne tower, the others moving silently, weaving and choking the dying city of it's feeble hope, turning it into a grand scale of my birthplace.

Loyalty is one of my greatest talents, it is in a way a downfall if my judgment in character is off a touch. Alike my single, but very high standard, I stick true to my wits' end when needed. That was what he liked about me. That was why he kept me close. I never understood him or why he treated me like so, much unlike how the cellmate screamed under his hand. Mine were those of a physical hate lain upon my body. The kindly treated inmate called to my mentor in the night, his voice in endless chanting of, 'Naja Haje, Naja Haje…'

I recall laying awake at all hours when the world turns cast in darkness, my hands searching out that of Moor, my friend whom took the most crippling of beatings meant for me. The land somehow calls to me to the shifting sands giving way to stone, and I answer by following the voice from my past. I pull off the hood and allow the wind to carry within it's powerful gust the leather, into the ground my article disappears as I knew it would. My eyes first skims over the baked stone rim gaping like a mouth screaming in peace, my chin tilts forward as does my upper torso over the balcony like open-door entrance, I lean over the wide well puncturing what seemed to be the end of the earth, those beside me peer over the stone rim in wonder. Fresh blood drying on sweat-salted fingers, and the breath of hungry bodies greets the noses of my followers, as unpleasant the scents I unsparingly allow one piece of my memory to interfere and lead my half-dead sense along, for I cannot smell. Memory still finds a way to shake me: this must have been the scene Ra's al Ghul and Talia were met with when they came back to save me.

My eyes dart around the disconnected rings of stone footholds swirling along the worn masonry marked by desperate bodies, I take Bruce's body from my followers and fasten a rope and harness around myself. My men each take a length of cable and brace themselves, I first ease myself and Bruce into the Pit until I reach a foothold, the men heaving me down with my impossible weight evenly distributed between them creates a horrid stir in my right hand, one which I instead quell by holding Bruce closer. Curious eyes blink up at the spectacle in the quickly subdued obscurity, hungry minds and dastardly bodies crowd below us both, the unconscious body of Batman held tightly to my own form, as if I were being lowered into an ether void of truly blithe stars. I need no weapon to make myself a formidable threat, the men know me, they see me as more than a man, less than a god, someone who paid his debt with blood and vessel of his many scars. The more I survey their awed faces, I see many my age looking worse for wear, several who crossed my path in my seeming infancy, others who became but vague creatures, slaves to their needs and senses.

An essence of finality drew the starved creatures away, the dark stars floating further into their void. I unwrapped myself from the rope and harness while two of Ra's uncovered students easily skittered down behind me, a few more came trickling down while the remainder and three League of Shadows students perched themselves on the hole's rock-shelf with their sniper rifles in hand, my voice boomed over the unusual quiet, "Is the good doctor still in business?"

"I may be of assistance," a withered man said, his stature slightly shriveled and hunched as he shuffled to me, I raised my hand to inform the jumpy death row inmates to lower their weapons, he beckoned us to follow him through the layered stairwell.

It was the same, yet smaller, possibly due to the fact that I kept growing even after my escape: The entire prison was centered around the light filtering in from above, but presumably south was where it laid in the recesses of sandstone the deepest, five planes of stacked levels and a cave at the bottom, open halls displaying barred cells divided the prison into sections, stone walkways and rusted iron handrails lined the coliseum-like architecture of the punishing-slum. Bruce grabbed hold of my coat and the straps of my defibrillator cartridge, his grip weak and slippery as his eyes burned blurrily into mine, I took a needle from my pocket and injected the injured Batman through his left thigh, making sure he saw the medical instrument in my hand before I buried the stainless steel point in his muscle, his breaths slowed instinctively. I put the half-responsive body of my defeated opponent onto a provided mattress as the inmate went scurrying about for the doctor. An old ache and my weakness to keep it at bay infiltrates my mind, prompting me to sit back against the bars before I unknowingly topple onto the occupied bed, my mentality still filling in an endless cycle of the events I endured, suffered, and fought to forget.

Still, my life plays back unwanted, unneeded, unaided as I let down my guard to absorb as much pain as I could to refuel my personal perception, my hate and respect for Naja Haje.

The first thing I felt as I grasped reality was the cold darkness wrapping me in its esoteric conundrum, my mother's touch shocking my skin and making me less of a shadow, and more human, more innocent that I should ever be allowed to declare myself. She traced the round softness of my face, whispering to me lovingly 'Osito', she memorized me in the dark where no light dared to shine, later learning that we were deep in the Pit, inside a sandstone and dirt hollow behind an iron door. Being first introduced to the depth of night, I could see my mother's face, and I had to watch as she blindly grasped about for everything. She was a woman living in the black, her past open to me as I was welcomed to live each moment alongside her; with her age giving birth to me at nineteen, was formerly a virgin courtesan of a desert sheik, whom she was saved from by a mysterious man, a soldier of fortune hired to kill the sheik. She heavily romanticized the events by which amity grew between my father and herself, and very quite possibly her horrible treatment and abuse from the shiek, first describing in pitch-gray shades how the sheik murdered her family when she was seventeen, then being stolen, protected and employed as a servant until she could bear children.

The sheik was very cruel to my mother purely through right, since she remembered mostly of her shame of laboring at a man's whim, making her scrub his other wives before he bedded them, allowing his 'desert bud' to suffer lashings and the bite of shackles every step under his leash. Hate boiled in my mother, making the advances of the sheik difficult and verily impossible. Until her warrior matching that of a god in advent, lightning fast in striking, agile and silent in movement, wise and silent in speech, terrible and noble in appearance - materialized from out of her prayers and unto the world. In my mind stood a mental picture of a being taller, their body less soft, and speech less of a high pitch than I. Her urges for me to love him stifled my conscious, and since time seemed to slow in the forgotten air pocket behind the prison, we seemed to talk forever on the subject of my father, the notion of how I bestow an emotion upon someone I hardly have knowledge of. Much less whom I do not at all trust.

Her love for me was purely mutual, divided between the colorless memories of my father and the shadows of him I represented, yet how I felt for my mother was sudden, as soon as she held to me whilst covered in her blood. I knew her touch, I knew her breath, I knew her contralto voice below a whisper, and I knew she was not of this land the few minutes spent deciphering the difference between her accent and our jailors' language. She left a residual past behind, across the sea to the West on her journey to a place East of here, to plead the aid of another, but being caught in the middle of a storm and being forced to have her uncle's plans delayed, they awaited stranded on the driest sea this side of the planet. Full circle we come with my explanation picking up at my birth, then tiptoeing around my mother's wayward recollections, we were afterwards pulled to the surface.

She refused readily to be freed during the day, our eyes having grown sensitive to it's forgotten caress, we were then brought out in the night, she escorted by men, and I thrown and locked in a box. Her freedom bought by the dead sheik's brother, and my own denied upon finding out the identity of my father, via the color of my eyes, neither brown or black, or rather the color of burned limestone, water stained with ash. Hours of their chatter and myself locked into a crate revealed many things about my father, how he ruthlessly murdered the sheik in cold blood, how the disbanded tribe hunted until succeeding in finding, capturing and abandoning my mother in the Pit. The dead chieftain's brother decided on keeping my mother, and sentencing me to the fate he so wished upon my father, lastly calling me the 'Halak'. The Curse's Heir among the most famous of variations, translating that into Bane, and back down to the darkness I was cast to a doom far less forgiving than my mother's fate. Now knowing her through the extensive information from the League of Shadows, I can only say she was a Carib native of Santa Prisca, a revolutionary, a mother and a warrior, several of many things she never told me. I mourn her terribly, but it is a dead feeling better forgotten.

I was possibly between my fourth or sixth year when I was sentenced here to the Pit after being released for a few hours, my body thrown into a bag and lowered down by the rope in the middle of the night, my eyes lastly brushing upon such beauty of the dark. A man who spoke brokenly the common language I understood cut me from the bag and led me upon warm stone to his cell, I was weary of following him, but even more apprehensive how a child having not known any better but to rely on Any adult, what could that child do in his innocence? Love, worship and above all else: Trust Unconditionally. I slept fitfully on the soft mattress, it was hardly better than the few blankets arranged on uneven sandstone, but all the same it having had no familiarity to me.

The first rays of light finally shone in it's faint glimmer of noon over the dull stone and rusted bars, I marveled at my first sight of color, each hue and dark being so starkly different made my heart leap. The morning's slow, laborious birth showered a small strobe of bright hot reds tinged by the night's warm indigo, gradually fanning the sky's fire into vivid gold, my eyes aching, my head pounding sharply the more I stared, but unable to tear my gaze away as I drank in those which were not merely pitch shads of black. Shapes I could Choose to feel wove and intermingled in my consciousness with what was rough, smooth, sharp, grainy, edgy, dry, wet, and all else I could not understand. I settled deeply into the bedding, my eyes now more slightly accustomed to the newly discovered light, and I thought more and more about the person who pulled me from the bag, until I saw who I lay beside.

My body to the wall, face to face, his own torso shielding me from the door or as I now understand: whoever may hostilely enter. He was small, dark, wizened and whiskery with wooly white hair, he was slightly taller than me at my height, not at all soft or graceful as my mother. His face was pleasantly furrowed, his clothes merely faded dark blue pants, a shirt and waist strap. I sat up, and he along with me, I stared out the bars, a feeling welling within telling me I will never see past them to the source of the sunlight. What had I done to deserve to have my life taken away from me, my punishment to be given back twofold? His frail fingers wiped my somnolent tears, his chest muffled my weak hiccups, and he whispered to me as my tired soul went wandering up the stone-rimmed chasm in the sand. I knew my parents were dead, I knew deep at the bottom of my heart, that they would not allow me to be eased down into such a hellish place.

He whispered to me as best he could, but still miserably in his poor pronunciation and choice of words, "Shh. There, there, Little One."

He draped the threadbare blanket over the bed, and pushed me under along with his stacked books, so that others not verily kind as he would not see me, and sadly, no one else was remotely humane as Moor. I lay in wait once again pressed back into obscurity, my body laying cradled within his small library, my eyes drawn to the light increasingly than to the shadow melting in and out from the corners of my eyes, I unknowingly held my breath by awakened reflex each time silhouetted legs passed behind the protective sheet, my body remembering all the times I was made to fear the passing of shadows beneath the tiny space of my mother and my self's prison. He came back to me when evening cast black shadows in the hole, his face bruised and hands bloody, his appearance rendered me speechless, not for the fact that I Knew he was hurt, or the small detail that he must have fought to bring us both food, nonetheless because I was fascinated by the vivid color, the wet silky texture and smell of his vital fluids.

He politely examined me, finding I was trim but strong in body, my bone structure suggesting healthy growth and development later on in my life if I were to ever survive my first year unprotected by the comforting dark, the unchanging night my mother gave birth to me into. I was prompted not to speak, he told me not to for the innocent voice of one so young could be mistaken for that of a woman, so then I was given a mirror and my hair was cut. The person staring back at me whilst I gazed back was someone I have never known, at the same time felt the presence of: a frail and tender-looking something with pale indecipherably-colored eyes, lips like a quartered peach with two sculpted halves pressed together, and hair looking as if it has never felt a brush, because in fact, my mother only used her fingers for such tasks. In awe and terrified rapture, I endured as each tangled lock was cut away by black volcanic glass, the Pit being abundant with them since the prison was a dead volcano itself. We ventured out, he with a blanket and a tiny lump of soap, I with my new weightlessness.

A wet cool dribbled from the sky, occasional flashes of clapping sounds rumbling in what I saw was a ceiling over the hole's opening, a grey veil pouring itself into the Pit. Moor rid me of my clothes, wrapping a blanket around me as he scrubbed, sudsed my skin and rinsed me. My former life washed away from me, only their memory retained within my reflection, Moor took his obsidian blade and shredded my clothing into rags, he then balled them up and threw the bundle down into the Pit's deepest vein, possibly to ward off suspicion of my existence. My feet slipped on the wet stone as we began our trek back to our cell, once there, he took from under his bed a well-worn but washed tunic and pants the same color as his, I was put in them with much of the excess hanging off me to be tied, tucked, or folded up. He handed me the mirror once more, seeing how I was still out of place and no longer in great need of a washing, everything lay in the same place I first seen them, only I now discovered how very, very unusual a pallor my skin took.

Moor brushed my newly groomed hair back, he saw my discomfort in how sickly I looked, but I was told most of all not to cry, because only children cried, and that if my first breath was one taken in the Pit, I was born a man. The danger of being heard was ever present, a constant reminder that I may be dragged out from my hiding place and paraded through the prison as a new form of entertainment. I still shudder to the thought that now, I may decimate all who are looking to wrong me. He breaks the flat miniscule bread in half after bringing it out from wrappings, which were hidden in his sleeve, giving me the most sizable piece to nibble, he took a few sips of milk from a bent tin before allowing me the rest, he made me full despite our horrid situation, and my gratitude and trust lay wholly with him. After my miniscule hunger was sated, he allowed my hand to roam around his gnarled arm, my fingers following the trails of his dried blood before being washed away by a saliva-dampened rag.

A grown man born in a child's body was how he treated me, like an old friend but frailer, softer, and seemingly new to the world, if this hole could be referred to as such. Without knowing or understanding the concept, childhood was completely lost to me, only a closely guarded innocence was the tattered remnant of how I was once born and treated secondly -due to my sired roots- with love. A vessel ever-thinking but empty of thought, Moor introduced me slowly to the new life I was to lead at his side: sleeping during the day to avoid danger: waking at night to remain aware, eating before dawn to prevent starvation. Difficulty in pronouncing my name became a war of few words, we eventually settled on a shorter, more simple version. He quickly slept after I peeled off most of his crusted blood, so I sat awake to wonder how time passes in a place where the world looked as if it were at a standstill, and I not at all aware of how my life was to speed past me in a matter of epitomes discovered through coincidence and fate. I lay awake peacefully for the rest of the night in my allotted space, Moor and every other inmate snoring and screaming for reasons then unidentified to me.

_'Deshi deshi basara -basara -basara! Deshi deshi basara -basara -basara! Deshi deshi basara -basara -basara!'_

I peek out from under the bed as their voices lull me out of sleep, parting the blanket away only slightly to watch someone fasten a rope to their waist, the hunger burning brighter than the sun, hope giving his body wings as he scales up the impossible walls, and out of my line of sight. I strain at my high angle to watch, but slowly, I grew to have what can only be drawn closest to someone suffering phantom limb pain. My hands prickle, I begin to tremble, my lips stuttering out the words before I can stop them. My miniscule strength becomes their will, my words become their heartbeat, my heartbeat becomes their steps; if they ever grabbed a hold of that wide chasm's edge, I feel somehow empowered to follow uncaring of my height or weakness. I start shouting along with the men beholding the spectacle, I feel as if my hope would lift the man's feet from step to step, that if I wished hard enough that the man would scramble over the wall and journey through his life as if Death could suddenly steal his breath.

I hear the silence, their loud and deep sighs tapering from the empowered shouts echoing still in my ears, my heart stops, and there are two spine-wracking cracks. The first of the rope snapping tight, the second of the body smashing against the wall, I lower the curtain and lay silently behind it until another decides to allow our collective yearning to spur him into action, rather not knowing whether he is experiencing the same disappointment as I or not ready to try again. This was only my first day, only noon, and already was my heart broken, the light glinting in my chest extinguished. I knew how impossible and dire a chance was lain upon anyone who dared do dream beyond the surrounding walls, risking defeat and regret whilst scraping from his last breath the very human compulsion to desire and wish against wish, also awakening the animal instinct to live. I had yet to taste both since the prison provides me with the dark, my anger at myself not yet enough to compel me to kill to survive or to fight for my life. It was coming steadily the longer I lived, the more my thirst for knowledge grew insatiable.

Moor showed me the possible necessities after each day in the safety of my dependable nighttime, I myself waiting expectantly at his side after being beckoned from my little sleeping quarters to his bed, my fingers tingling and eyes lit in lively sparks. He laid out on the fourth night what he scavenged of a few rags, lumps of wax, three large glass beads and a broken bar which was as long as my arm, but heavier than anything I have ever imagined. With what little water we had, he washed the rags and sewed them into a quilt, he boiled the wax and made smaller, longer-burning candles, he braided a leather cord and fixed the three beads to my neck. He made my bedding out of his books under the sorry contraption he slept on, putting his extra clothing worn soft under my head along with a considerably thick book as a makeshift pillow.

The bar was a different story the next night when I could go about since I was safer roaming our cell in the dark, he instructed me to pick up the bar any time I ever laid eyes on it. It was impossible, and more than once I smashed my fingers or scraped my skin before letting the metal fall from my weak grip, adding the sound of my failure to the cadence of voices dying away from their hoping chant. Sometimes when I wake early in the evening, my mind in a state of unrest, I think if I were to follow in the men's steps and try my hand a climbing, I may stumble upon something far brighter than dawn or more welcoming than the night. Were I successful, would I be disappointed to find the world as ugly and hostile as the Pit? If I failed, would I ever be able to make a second attempt, or would my spirit be completely destroyed? What if I decided to live out my days in this prison, who would I trust? Would life be actually as cruel to me as it is to everyone else? Who would I decide to befriend? Should I risk myself and my wellbeing to see, to experience what is outside the Pit? If so, would the consequences be harder to bear than the actions before?

I interrogated myself, nearly ripping myself to shreds before coming upon a conclusion: A strong body and an even stronger mind will get me out. Not until Moor comes back from scavenging does he bring a gift with him, my one true friend in a state of unrecognizability, he was a tiny thing without stuffing or a life of his own, Moor explained to me awkwardly that a shepherd threw their own old belongings down the Pit, and for all his hard work was he rewarded a stuffed Something, a few torn books and a ripped water skin. The fall must have been terrible, though physical pain was hardly my close companion, I knew my little friend was in no mood for smiling as his mouth suggested.

We lay under the bed that night, my fingers diligently scrawling letters and reciting their sounds, my eyes straying to my little friend laying in a torn heap, Moor's nods of approval after my fingers drew neater curves, straighter lines, rounder O's and clearer pronunciations, the understanding of the Western language strengthening in my speech. The tiny candle flickering to Moor's wheezing breaths and my quiet ones while I dozed beside soothed him, Moor worked tirelessly all night after my lessons to give some shape back to what ever it was that he brought back to our cell. I woke a few hours later in the evening with one of the most beautiful, most unfortunate things I had ever seen, my fingers traced over the stitches blending tan wool and gray velvet, my companion's body mostly it's original wool and most of his tiny face obscured in gray velvet: I held in my hands a smiling, blind Something.

Moor trudged in with our supper dish, skipping happily and asked what I though of the little thing, I knew in my mind that I asked, "Moor, why is he blind?"

"The bear?" Moor sat me on the bed, pulling from under a loose stone slate on the floor a black, rusted tin, he popped the lid off and took a bone needle, he strung a cord through the eye and said to me, untying the gift necklace from my neck, "His friend gives him eyes."

To this day, the meaning evades me, not for the fact that I have no precious existing relations, but trying to logically draw his conclusion means that first I have to live an event I have never found use for. The action of Investing my time in a certain person and Absorbing their affection in a single and precariously endless cycle, all I had was my blind little 'bear'. I took the needle from Moor when he offered it to me, timidly I held the glass bead in place at a vacant spot where I knew the eye had to sit. With the first stitch, a seed of faith grew unbeknownst to me, the single most infectious virus called 'hope' took hold of me, making my hands eager and unsteady. With the first prick of my hand, there was a single miniscule-second shot of disgust and animosity toward my friend, but as his single blue eye stared at me from under his bloodstained eyelid, his hand-stitched mouth smiling at me unfalteringly, my chest warmed, I then learned a new sentiment: Forgiveness. The heat blooming throughout where I presumed my soul was, my touches grew light and gentle, slowly I began to care for him as more than a lump of wool and velvet. His other eye was a little easier to sew, but my blood staining his eye led me to understand that I was a part of him, and that I cared for him as much as Moor, since then has our separation been intensely rare.

Then there was the solid steel pole, nothing but disgust existed in it's iron ore for me, lifting and dropping it became routine. I gradually grew stronger, my wrists and arms showing very slight signs of sinew, I could hold on to the solid bar, but I still struggled to lift it. He advised me to take my time, to not fight against my weakness, but turn it into determination, he explained that where one part was weak, there is another that is strong, that in time I will grow and change so that my frailty will burn away, becoming power. I trusted him, he had yet to betray me. As young as I was, I loved the prospect of reaching outside the bars to the echoed sunlight. He saw how I yearned to step outside of the jailing cell and watch the strange glow pass fleetingly over the skin-stained walls, their masonry holding freshly conquered memories as I relived the blissfully dire-entwined moments.

He instead locked me inside our cell while he went about his usual business in bartering our unneeded goods, offering unneeded rations and favors in return of food or small, harmless pleasures for me from someone named Naja Haje. A new name and occasion brought confusion to me of the identity of the mysterious Naja Haje, Moor informed me as best he could that the man named Naja Haje was dangerous, a sort of shamed assassin-prince from the East who adopted the Cairene culture. I wanted more than ever to go outside, I wanted to see this prince who ruled not unlike that of Hades, Moor then kept a closer watch on me, checking the lock twice and even bartering for sleep-inducing medicine, then feeding me sleeping powders dissolved in milk before the sun rose. His plan worked, for I could not refuse the liquid sweetness or it's nutritional properties the longer I came to understand it's benefits.

Moor allowed me to read his materials, since I already had a very basic understanding of sounds and spelling from his dutiful tutoring, I had little trouble reading the words, but understanding the words' meaning was the challenge, so then he bartered a dictionary written in the western language from Naja Haje since I rarely accepted his help moreover in my self-determination than my sense of superiority, which was Very minimal. He marked my time spent at his side with my progression through his hidden library, summing one page a night, sometimes the page having been read twice or three times, informing him that six months passed since my coming here, to the Pit. All that time coming out to stretch my tediously aching limbs gave me no choice but to crawl out from under the bed, extend my cramped tendons and muscles, and look about the room until my eyes laid on the single bar, I remembered my promise, so I continued my feeble attempts at lifting the object.

A year since my re-incarceration nearly inched by before Moor and I were given a cellmate, Imam was what he called himself, he spoke the common tongue easier than Moor. Since I was still a secret, I crawled out from under Moor's bed one night unbeknownst and took one of Imam's books, but the newest addition of the Pit did not at all seem to notice until I woke him with a start a few nights later, my voice barely above a whisper I asked, "Do you have another, Imam?"

"Not for a while, I'm afraid," he answered me, he looked almost like Moor, except he was taller, his face touched lightly by age, and less careful as Moor, he asked, "Would you like to take a walk with me?"

"I'd love to, Imam," I whispered with as much enthusiasm to make him laugh, taking Little Bear as he unbolted the door with the extra key he was given before his descent, I grew to instantly love my newfound freedom, even while I was still held within a larger cage. A cage made by my own weakness, one that I was more than willing to overcome if not at the very moment I saw sunlight.

I pattered quietly around the dusty uneven flooring, yet my steps were light and fleeting as I flew down a flight of stairs, my cloth-wrapped feet and hands scrambling up the stone to the rope. I looked up into the sky, my gasp nothing more than a sigh swallowed by the hole, the dark infinite scattered with glinting stars through a shallow upward-facing tunnel, my mind memorizing a new hue: the white of stars, a million tiny suns wrapped in a pitch blackness, my eyes refused to look away, I was stuck staring past the wide well's limit, I saw how the rope connected to a metal ring jutting from the wall halfway up the hole. Imam pressed a finger to my lips before I could allow my smile to evolve into a relieved laugh readily bubbling in my throat, he instead taught me how to climb the rope using only my hands and legs to propel me upward.

First tying Little Bear across my back in a sling, I followed his easy directions, use one arm and one foot as an anchor, one arm to grip half an arm's length ahead, and the other leg to keep the rope slightly parallel from the wall. I tested my own weight on the rope, my strengthened arms pulling me skyward until I lifted myself from the prison floor and into the gaping tunnel, I tied the rope around my waist as I have seen so many times and I climbed the sun-warmed wall to a shelf which was nearest, my hands burning with anticipation on the worn smooth surface, my skin breaking in an exhilarating cold sweat. I glanced down at Imam when I reached a shelf, and I rolled off but caught my weight with my legs and ran down as fast as my feet could carry me, all while avoiding the wall's grooves and footholds. The braided cord kept me from running smack flat into the ground as the rope directed me into an arc, I ran and turned to swing back downward, my lungs and body were on fire, but I craved so much to make use of myself.

He watched silently as I ran in round angles about the smooth-edged walls, by means of my legs to drive me forward until I was practically swinging up the walls using the force of my weight as the metal ring pivoted me. My body left its heaviness high above and away from me, unlimited and ungoverned by laws which regulate the world full of impossibilities, only while falling did I feel my weight double, but the thrill of having no physical binding to the ground, even if for a second, perchance the knot giving way at my waist intoxicated me, and ignorantly was I grazing death, I scrambled hand and foot up the wall.

The night breathed a kind of comfort to me, enveloping me in it's cool boundlessness the more I exerted myself in sense-sharpening throes, my eyes caught sight of the flushed hue blanching, and extinguishing the stars out of the sky. I was drawn intolerably to the outside world as never before. The very slight rays shifted night to early morning, and I climbed up to a shelf to watch the sunrise, my limbs aching wonderfully as my lungs pumped soothingly against my lightened heart. The scents were also new and mind-whetting, the bland edge of hot sand and organic decay cooled away gently, buffered aside for the nocturnal perfumes still lingering: earthy mineral salts lining the outer rim of the walls, a balmy sweetness drifting thickly with each breath and accidental breeze. No one can ache so much to touch and see the sources of these scents, further I was seduced and unwaveringly wedded blindly to a world I have never yet seen.

"One day, Little Bear, we will climb, and leave, and never look back," I said to my friend who was still tied to my back, I breathed deeply, reaching for the warm softness the sky seemed to be so characteristic of, my fingers and palms only feeling heat, but no telltale friction to add to my experience.

Imam threw a rock up to the shelf, jarring my revere, I glanced down to him where I long forgot he stood waiting for me, he motioned quickly that we should leave, I cautiously climbed down along the raised footholds in the wall, he untied the rope from my waist and quickly carried me back to our cell before we were caught by Moor and the others. I climbed into my lived-in comfortable book-nest and watched Imam reach under his own cot, my yawn gratefully strung out of my chest near-stifling the sight of him producing four large volumes, the philosophies of Avicenna being the first, the second of Aristotle, the third of Benedict de Spinoza, and lastly, John Locke.

He tucked me in along with my stuffed friend, calling him 'bera' first, Imam said before allowing me to drink the sleeping powder-laced milk, "Read Aristotle first, Avicenna after."

How a mind can comprehend so many ideas is still a mystery, Talia assures me of having a mind not unlike those I read and interpreted, yet she just as easily allowed her father to reshape her education to that of Physical science from mine consisting of Intellectual expansion. My only child carrying the long roots of my love meandered alone in Gotham where self-destruction is the only statement in her mind, those words may echo that of Moor and Imam the longer I lay under the bed with the greatest minds printed and tucked under my cheek as I slept, the words of philosophers and their own self-discovered truths, some that I still apply and live by to this day. As for my doings from then on since evolved into three relationships: teacher and pupil, caretaker and cub, and friend. They never once mentioned of their own families or laid such expectations upon me that I was pressured into being their child or acting as their son, they both knew all too well how the Pit has a way of making men killers, and understanding my birth in this place from unknown sources, I was anticipated to be simply ruthless if the prison ever fully dug it's sudden claws into me. Thusly, wisely, never allowing themselves to love me.

The balance between the absorption of words and my physical activities became a harmonious schedule either Moor of Imam instigating my goings on. I sleep during the daylight hours to keep out of sight, I read where I left off if there are still inmates roaming about or awake after my sleep-powders wear off, Imam unlocks our cell so that I may be able to stretch my legs or watch the sunrise on the wall, and finally, I take my scraped-together meal and powder-mixed milk only to repeat my days' events. My two friends kept me in meticulous secrecy for the longest time until my 'day' started when night physically claimed the hours my eyes were open, my 'night' phased before dawn could ever fully peek into the well, and not at all most of the times I watched. Begging my body for readiness to escape was another thing, I grew more fond of the day though having never seen the sunshine's full glory. I trained harder, not fully comprehending how age doubled to busy bodies, mine in a physical and mental sense.

My arms strained, barely able to lift the bar past my elbows by the time I read Moor's entire modest collection, and a fraction through Aristotle, tallying one year and several days past five months, all the same, I was beginning to read faster without the use of the borrowed dictionary, which was instead traded for a thesaurus and anatomy catalogue. Moor and Imam were visibly proud of me, my first cellmate Moor began staying awake with me at night, his body now dwarfed by my slighter height and heavier than mine, which easily fit beside me under the bed, Imam taking his much-needed rest once out of every few days to recuperate from not being able to adapt to a nocturnal lifestyle as effortlessly as I. My endurance progressed, sadly also my metabolism, the two noticed how gaunt I grew, but not out of starvation or infection, they assumed my body accepted the demands and strains beheld unto it, and instead of rejecting the new skills I have learned, it adapted and adjusted to my routine.

What I can only describe as my muscle development being kicked into overdrive, hard knotted bulk plumed like an infection over my body, first overtaking my arms, then my back and shoulders, my stomach and legs finally completing my volatile appearance. Being in a state of shock is an understatement, I was afraid, excited and confused of the outcome that I was suppose to wait for until my tenth or fifteenth year in the Pit. Not until I began leafing through a new book, one touching upon subjects briefly on medical anomaly did I then understand whence reaching upon the chapter and sections relating to hypertrophy and dysplasia, I was loosely using the term 'suffering' the effects of hyperpituitarism, therefore leading to my self-diagnosed condition of gigantism. Pain relating to my bones stretching and muscles flexing horribly to accommodate my ever-changing body seemed the likeliest not to blame my faults on.

Moor also began taking me out of our cell with Imam napping inside our shared quarters, he took two pieces of wood longer than his entire arm, and said to me, "Do what you need to defend yourself." I knew the moment he experimentally swung at my feet, that I had to learn quickly to adapt, defend, flourish, and eventually retaliate. Night provided me a slight advantage over his sight, which is limited to the dusk's dimming light, I avoided and disappeared mostly in tall crevices and narrow blind spots at Moor's side. An odd thrill sped up my heart and spread a cold sweat through my skin, my breathing fighting to both keep me coherent and lessen to a shallow halt, lest he hear me and teach me another painful lesson in self-control. I hid, watching him listen and moving intently sometime onward or passing me completely, only to spin around and lay the cane on a stray body part, most of the time my midsection or arm. Invisible time blending my waking hours passed swiftly under the staff, and my beloved daytime betrayed me, since all I could do was evade clumsily from the tender agony set in dark stripes about my torso, trophies of my shame, I scurried about as best I could with Moor ready to tutoring me harshly all the best credos he could fit into our night. The first pelts of branch to my skin was none too gentle nor forgiving compared to the soreness felt the next day, the lesson's full force hitting me, and I knew my next actions to take while facing Moor.

He smiled to me as I collapsed and caught both rods in my hand before they could stripe me a new bruise across my back, I held onto both makeshift weapons, which made Moor lay them down and instead pick up stones. Anticipating different forms of teaching from Moor, I watched him raise the pebbles and throw them to our cell, waking Imam, he motioned for our half-dozing cellmate to come to us, I cringed weakly since the memory of my mother retained in such a tender motion, Imam picked me up, my fatigued body towered over by him whilst I lay across his shoulder and chest. Never asking or reassuring me of what they were doing was an explicit act of kindness and caring, I was put in Moor's bed, my upper body propped up on several books and a shapeless pillow, they both fed me generously my share. Eating after the education-filled night had me full halfway through my meal, they finally ended my repast with the usual milk and powder, but the pleasant haziness over my eyes kept me awake long enough to watch how Moor and Imam layered their blankets over me until only enough room was left for me to breathe freely.

The smell of baking iron met my senses, first immersing my dreams of what beauty may spread outside these unbolted walls, then changing the dreamscape into that of red hot metals, the flat surface my legs carrying me upon turning into boiling ore. I sat up straight on Moor's bed only to find myself alone, wondering if I have ever seen an uglier dreamscape in my mind than one I was presented with, my breathing calmed, my limbs remained tense, I bit my tongue to keep from crying, I blinked about to reassure my reality. Before me stood the same wall, to my right lay the back of another inmate, to my left was a small walkway between Moor and Imam's bed, beyond Imam's cot was another inmate's currently unoccupied quarters. How insignificant and singularly alive gripped me, making my nerves stand on end, I jumped to the sound of screeching behind our cell's door, finally discovering in shock Moor and Imam, their bodies slumped against the bars. Never has the unpredictability of mortality appalled me so, I fell off the bed in attempt to run to their side, I crawled with the same stripes under my clothing, which probably darkened during the day.

I gripped their shoulders through the bars and my voice a little less than a shaky whisper stirred the humid air inside my reliable dark, "Moor…Imam, you're not asleep."

They chuckled quietly, the agony etched deeply on their faces apparent, but neither knowing my sight converted to better see at night, they freely twisted their expressions while keeping their voices guarded and falsely calm; Imam said to me, "The key…it's inside bera."

Seeming as if to drop from here and now, I pulled my hands away and held Little Bear tighter to my body, oh the torture he must have been in, but like me, he never cried for nothing; I whispered while my fingers felt along the seams for a hole, "…you hurt Little Bear."

"It was necessary," Moor answered, my finger plunged into Little Bear's insides, maybe the fact that the initial bewilderment of my dream-turn-nightmare had not passed, but I felt a slippery warmth and confused, severed organs inside my little friend, his smile never faltering the further my hand ventured, "-to keep you safe."

A new sensation took hold of me: Revenge, the satisfying act and witnessing of wishing an ill fate to another. I wanted to watch Moor and Imam die for what they did to Little Bear, I wanted to initiate the act of their death, I wanted them to Suffer, to beg for Little Bear's forgiveness aware that my friend could not speak even if He was willing to verbally grant them mercy. Fire inside me abated, the sparks quenched by the fact that I was treated with utmost compassion if not equality, I allowed my memory to sift out the most generous and humane, finally coming to terms how I was better off upholding our three relationships rather than letting them wait for morning to be found outside our cell. I silently apologized to Little Bear the more I stirred my fingers where I knew it would hurt, somewhere I knew the heart was lay the key, every curl and slide of my fingers felt as if I was scratching inside my own ribcage. Eventually grasping a rusted steel pin, I pushed it into the lock on the door and twisted until the deadbolts inside the door clicked, I set my bear under Moor's bed and proceeded to drag their bodies in.

Still fresh blood seemed to set in crimson rivers across their faces and bodies, their fingers and exposed arms, their clothes in shreds, their shoes gone, I smelled again the singed iron in my dream. They both had a look at the damage, they both understood how hard it was for me to rifle inside Little Bear's back, my head was still heavy with the experience, my arms felt like stone after I at last pushed my cellmates into their respective beds. They refused to eat my food, but accepted the powder-laced milk, I drank water from our mended water skin and a weak dose of powder after the two welcomed their own dream state to fully pull them out of the Pit. Sleep refused to claim me, I instead cleaned their wounds but could do no more since the gashed skin clotted, the dried blood fell off in flakes the more I passed a damp rag over their closing injuries. I hugged Little Bear close after locking the door and slipping the key into Imam's hand, I refused to wonder at all what happened to Moor and Imam while I slept hours before.

The world seemed to wake, teem with life, quicker than the blink of an eye, I slipped under Moor's bed and propped open a book. I was now reading the very first chapters of Avicenna, now done with Aristotle and with the further hunger for adventure awakened, but prison where I was, I reminded myself how I may one day escape, so I slept, dreaming of places and things I may never come to see past death. Rarely did I ever witness anything out of the ordinary, except when suddenly waking early from the weak powdered dose sizzling out of my system, I lay awake from my nap with daylight dying beyond the high walls, Moor and Imam snoring and still out of commission above me, and I turned over onto my stomach to shuffle forward over my bedding made of books. I stared about the fatiguing populace filing back into their barracks, countless tired bodies ready to let their quiet night slip by into another grueling day, I was about ready to turn over and prop an open book under my chin until the clank of metal brought my eyes back to the walkway. A face just a hand's length away from mine lay staring beyond me, the nameless face twisting, pleading to whichever deity to spare him, he pointed a shaky finger at me.

I looked on in wonderment, the dying man's eyes hypnotizing me, drawing me into the last moments, fixing my eyes to his, his fear permeating me, as if I were walking down the dimly-lit spirals into his soul. First opening the windows of his eyes to crawl in, opening the door of his mind, stepping in and following a jagged downward coil extending from the pit of the man's empty heart. The room I enter is cold, airless yet I do not fear it, the floor is damp, I look to see that I am wading in blood, glass and tears. The sensations and wounds do not frighten me, I am rather at peace in such a place, I cannot bring myself to look away from him, the huddled form lying paused in the frigid room's center. Imam's book laying forgotten and unopened at my side as I watched the man slip from faith's grasp, his eyes crestfallen into that of complete submission.

For the cultivated innocence in me, I was not at all prepared for what happened next, the lips spewed blood, some of the cooling solid warmth caking to my face and dripping on Imam's volume, a foot kicked the disconnected head away, through the railings and over the walkway. I beheld for the first time the taking of another life. The room disappears, but I cling to the feeling of the shocking caress of life, I crawl out from under the bed, Little Bear tied to my back by cloth. My silent steps to the barred door jars me in my seemingly silent racket, I can hear my heart running and shouldering against my ribcage, I crawl forward as cautious as I can, my breaths gradually catching in my throat. My eyes make out a shape beyond the bars, the still sprawled body of the dead man, not that I knew he could not hear me or react to me as I had been told other inmates do, but death was still something written by philosophers who rather Rationalized than Declared the state of mortality, namely demise.

At an absolute loss, I did all I could do in my insatiable state of childlike inquisitiveness, I let myself out with a newly borrowed book, Leonardo da Vinci's anatomy directory. The man without his face made him less threatening, but were he only a head without his body, I would have thought him still alive with a soul instead of scientific means for Retaining life, so I cautiously made my way up to the form. The first thing I noticed was how strongly he smelled, nothing at all the pleasant things I have been accustomed to up until now, I retreated only to rush two steps forward. I held my breath long enough to finally be seated at his side, the metal railings at my back, I opened the book and skimmed for one that was similar, and I found the page, I lay the book down on the decapitated man's back and inquisitively pushed a finger to the visible muscles. It was stiff and dark blood squirted on my wrist when I pushed harder, I searched the chapter for what the culprit was, two labels and one obscured read 'jugulum' and 'jugularis'.

The man no longer a conscientious entity, or remotely whole without his head, I took a shard of obsidian and pressed it to the skin, and astonishingly, like a piece of fabric his skin gave way under the sharp edge, dark opaque liquid greeting the shard and my fingers. The amount was not at all copious, the scent not retaining the scent of boiling iron, rather it was stagnant, sour and overwhelmingly rancid, stiff in particular also. I was repelled, but more than ever strongly occupied further with understanding as Leonardo da Vinci has with his sketches, I wanted to discover all these different layers of flesh, muscle and bone that make the human body mobile, animate, and at times unable to cope with change. Due to my size and stress on being but a shadow, it took me quite a while to strip the man down to his last layer of attire: his skin. Can nothing be kept sacred some may ask, one's unmoving obligation freely given to me is enough a religion.

The hours I had spent shearing skin from muscle only made me evermore inquisitive in diving further, peeling back flesh stratums, plucking gently at inlaid strings, accidentally cut veins at times letting free long lengths of clots. Only getting so far as the man's arm and chest, the dawn tolling the sun's ascent, I tied Little Bear to my back and went my way to the gaping mouth to the sky, to dream myself far away where the sun shines beautifully forever, where there are copious sweet scents accompanied by gentle textures and painted in dawn's vibrant colors, a place where it is so dazzling and wonderful that it hurts to gaze, yet one is unable to close their eyes to such splendor. I untie Little Bear and hug him to myself, kissing his embroidered pink nose until the sun rises higher, long rays like arms reaching out of the clouds as it crawls upward into the blue expanse, below me there is a sound, shuffling and heavy. I follow the noise, my chin dipping downward as I peer over the ledge, as carefully as I could leaning forward, the distance to the ground had never looked so far away as it did at that very moment. Out of the darkness were a pair of eyes, white and reflective as shattered mirror glass, eyelids closed over them once, twice, my hand slipped and I fell. I realized then how I forgot to tie myself on the rope.

I took pleasure in being airborne, my body weighing as much as a breath I took, not this time, I feared that if I closed my eyes, I may be in a sleep to wake from to a further debilitating nightmare, the stones fell up faster than ever, looking as if they were shattering into the sky's ceiling, which turned out to be my heart crashing in my chest. Miles of air slipped through my fingers, purchase came in no form except in a small comfort, if I may fall to the ground, I knew I would be set free. My eyes remained open, my arms tense and clothes billowing behind me, he opened his arms and caught me, Bera still in my arms as I allowed my body to tremble and my breathing to be a raging storm. I was but a bundle in his hold, everything I was expected to fear of being seen made me react a second too late, he held me, my neck to his shoulder in case I tried to pull away, truth be told, his touch and presence both comforted and disturbed me.

Many layers of tunics and white robes could barely hide the fact of how much of a behemoth he was, simple gestures which would have broken me in half were instead Hinted upon me, lest I was to shatter in any type of careless treatment, and he acted toward me like so. Describing from how I know now to compare such movements, as if I were a lover, too young to understand at the time, I finally digest the brush of his fingers, each muscle being reined in to not bruise me with however much pressure that might have taken to mark my skin. Yet as realization dawned upon him, his very scant motions became gentle, so small and at the same time observant.

I had yet to understand what a turn my life would take now that I am no longer Imam or Moor's secret.

* * *

See where 'Pre-Planned Drabbles' get me?

It got tedious after I tried recreating a world completely from memory (I was obsessed with Egyptology, geology, biology & Bane from the Batman comics/'Batman & Robin' film nearly a decade ago, but still into World History & Cultural Studies. Also I had no clue who Osito was [read previously by the very first fics featuring Bane], so that was kind of a rip off after I found out Osito was an Actual character, but it somehow shaped Bane, so I included him in the story, only as Bera or 'Little Bear'), so there. It ain't great, but I tried. There's no familiar mention of 'Venom' taking queue from Christopher Nolan's film & the fact that Most of his history is not elaborated, only that Bane was freakishly huge (gigantism) & an intellectual. Obviously I read too much 'District X' & J. R. R. Tolkien to give credit for cooking up the OCs & incognito DC characters (namely Naja Haje)  
I hope y'all like because Bane is friggin hard to write, as I've now found, & more than 5000+ words have been cut to make into a second chapter, when I Tried my hardest to novelize & make this a ONESHOT. Stupid me.  
If this offended you, avid fan, please understand that i'm a fucking idiot & this is merely fanfiction, Not a True retelling of Bane's hystory.


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